


Nico's Seven Worst Qualities (And Why They Make Percy Love Him More)

by aimmyarrowshigh



Series: Vices/Virtues (2 Parts) [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: 5 Times, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Seven Deadly Sins, Underage Drinking, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-08
Updated: 2011-01-08
Packaged: 2017-12-12 17:44:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/814246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimmyarrowshigh/pseuds/aimmyarrowshigh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Despite the propensity that their fathers have for taking many (many, many, many… many… and a few more…) lovers, Nico is very confident that he is the only person who will ever again grace Percy Jackson’s bed. He knows, with the same absolute finality that he knows he can direct skeletons and bind the Dead to the Underworld and brandish a Stygian sword and evaporate his enemies in sudden geysers of flaming hellfire, that he can make Poseidon’s favorite son tremble with the slightest touch, anywhere. He knows every inch of Percy’s body and every way they all affect him and Nico knows that no one will ever, ever even begin to understand Perseus Jackson the way that he can.</i><br/>---</p><p>Γαστριμαργία (Gluttony), Ὑπερηφανία (Pride), Λύπη (Sloth), Ὀργή (Wrath), Κενοδοξία (Envy), Φιλαργυρία (Greed), Πορνεία (Lust).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nico's Seven Worst Qualities (And Why They Make Percy Love Him More)

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer** : I don't own anything. All characters, settings, and proprietary language are owned by the author of the work from which this is derived.
> 
> ORIGINALLY POSTED [HERE](http://aimmyarrowshigh.livejournal.com/27214.html) on 8 January 2011.

** Nico's ~~Five~~ Seven Worst Qualities (And Why They Make Percy Love Him More) **

**  
**  
_001\. Γαστριμαργία (Gluttony)_  


He’s just so _cute_ when he drinks too much of the wine of the gods. Or any wine, really, but his dark skin takes on that pink flush much more quickly with the divine wine. (Divine wine! _Nico would’ve giggled here, burying his red face into the curve of Percy’s neck._ It rhymes!)

Being the son of Hades, Nico probably should have been an angry drunk, but since when did Nico ever do anything the way Hades would have? And okay, maybe Percy shouldn’t have been buying (mortal) wine for his seventeen-year-old boyfriend, but really, _who_ could resist Nico when he twists his fingers into one’s beltloops and toys coyly with the front of one’s jeans and looks up from under his black-as-Styx eyelashes and says something smarmily charming like, “Well, what kind of a romantic picnic in Elysium _doesn’t_ have wine?”

It never did Percy any good to protest – weakly – that they weren’t really bringing mortal food to Elysium; it didn’t _work_ that way. 

“Well,” Nico would just say, as his thumbs crept just under the hem of Percy’s t-shirt, in that place between where his jeans stopped and his shirt started that always made his breath catch, “No. But we can pretend that it does, if you buy wine.”

So Percy always would fold, and Nico would bend the shadows of the dark aisles of the wine store around himself and walk beside him, one hand in Percy’s back pocket and the other taking bottles off the shelf so he could scoff about things like ‘acescence’ and ‘chaptalization,’ and sometimes he would uncork a bottle and take a swig before pulling a terrible (beautiful) face and putting it back, open, on the shelf.

Percy shook his head and called him a lush, every time, and Nico just smiled like a very bad angel and asked, “Isn’t that why you love me?”

And every time, Percy had to smile back and pull the boy out of the shadows and kiss him, because he was the son of Hades, and he _had_ to be a lush. It was in the job description.

Literally.

And if he weren’t, Nico wouldn’t be Nico anymore.

**_002\. Ὑπερηφανία (Pride)_ **

Despite the propensity that their fathers have for taking many (many, many, many… many… and a few more…) lovers, Nico is very confident that he is the only person who will ever again grace Percy Jackson’s bed. He knows, with the same absolute finality that he knows he can direct skeletons and bind the Dead to the Underworld and brandish a Stygian sword and evaporate his enemies in sudden geysers of flaming hellfire, that he can make Poseidon’s favorite son tremble with the slightest touch, anywhere. He knows every inch of Percy’s body and every way they all affect him and Nico knows that no one will ever, ever even begin to understand Perseus Jackson the way that _he_ can. 

**_003\. Λύπη (Sloth)_ **

“Come _on_ , Nico,” Percy begs, pulling on a bare, dark, olive-skinned arm like lead. “We have to train.”

“No.” Nico groans, rolling onto his back and letting his other arm fall over his eyes to block out the light. Nico: forever a child of darkness. It’s more intimate there, in the dark. 

Percy keeps yanking at Nico’s wrist, trying to rouse him like a counselor should, but well – the intentions were a little halfhearted and a little baseless, considering no respectable Camp Half-Blood counselor would have a sweaty, naked camper in their bed, sea-blue sheets draped just barely over thin, defined hips.

Nico pushes his hand lazily through his mussed black hair. One eye opens to a squint and considers Percy’s determined face. “Five more minutes?”

Percy sighs and drops Nico’s arm. He sit down on the edge of the bed. “Five more minutes.”

Nico bites his lip and opens the sheets, revealing a _very_ inviting view to his boyfriend. “Half an hour?”

Percy rolls his eyes but discards his shirt and cages Death’s Son beneath him on a mattress that smells of ocean water and cemetery dirt. “Half an hour.”

**_004\. Ὀργή (Wrath)_ **

It’s almost like slow-motion.

One of the Laistrygones broke free from the hold Annabeth had him and he dove after Percy, mad-eyed and foaming at the mouth with starvation, producing from the cloth at his waist a shining bronze dagger the length and width of a steak knife and serrated with points crusted in diamond; impervious and deadly –

And normally, that would be no matter for Perseus Jacson, Son of Poseidon and Beloved by the Son of Hades, who watched as Perseus bathed in the River Styx and been made Invincible –

But the Laistrygone made for the tender spot on Percy’s back, between his shoulders and in a direct line to his big, big heart; his vulnerable spot, and the only place where Percy was, just as any other twenty-one-year-old man, a human being.

But Nico di Angelo, the Summoner of Death, the Ghost King, saw only red, and both Percy and Annabeth would later recount the moment that Nico descended upon the rabid Laistrygone with his bloodwashed Stygian blade as one of the most truly terrifying, heroic, _beautiful_ – _deadly_ – things that had ever happened in any world.

**_005\. Κενοδοξία (Envy)_ **

Nico had always assumed that someday, he would be as tall as Percy. After all, he was four years younger (kind of), but someday that wouldn’t matter. He had been sure that eventually, he’d be tall enough that he wouldn’t have to pull Percy down to him by the shoulder to kiss him, and that would be wonderful. 

But now that he was seventeen, he had to admit – grudgingly, of course, because he was Nico – that he would always be a head-and-almost-to-the-shoulders shorter than the prince of the Sea. Maybe those seventy years he had spent inside his own child-body stunted his growth. 

He knew that it didn’t bother Percy at all, or anything. Percy seemed to like the way he could tuck Nico into his side when they were walking together, and how Nico’s mouth was always perfectly placed to drag a kiss across the feverish, softly-human vulnerable plain between the wings of his shoulder blades when they were tangled in bed, Nico behind and above Percy, pressing the older boy into the pillows with his hips and watching his sea-gold hands clutch at the headboard –

But all the same, Nico wished he could have that imposing air that Percy carried with him. 

Right there in that extra eight inches of height.

**_006\. Φιλαργυρία (Greed)_ **

Nico got unreasonably possessive every time another boy – or god, or monster, or even girl – paid attention to Percy. He understood, of course. Even if you were just a mortal and didn’t _know_ that Percy was a Big Damn Heroic demigod wünderkind sexyface – 

Well, Nico got kind of distracted whenever he tried to categorize Percy. The aura around Percy, the vibe Percy gave off to _everyone_. 

That was the one thing that had ever scared Nico di Angelo, Son of Hades, totally shitless, you know. Not being able to tell if Percy Jackson, Son of Poseidon, shone for him… or just shone.

But now he knew. He knew very well that the ways Percy shone for him were completely different, set apart, from the light Percy gave to everyone else. To the other campers at Half-Blood Hill, Percy shone like a trophy; his legend was that to which every demigod should aspire. Orpheus. Hercules. Houdini. Percy Jackson. Against monsters, Percy shone like a sliver of the sun’s reflection off a blade just before it bit, beautiful and deadly and the last thing any of them ever saw.

Nico couldn’t really see what girls saw in Percy, though, honestly. The boy was just so _obviously_ gay. He wasn’t effeminate, or anything, but –

Granted, in Nico’s experience of observing Percy, he always had a Nico di Angelo wrapped around him, so that was kind of a dead giveaway. Maybe it was different when Nico wasn’t there.

But when _boys_ looked at Percy… well, Nico overreacted. Just a little. He knew it, too – he just didn’t care. He knew what boys saw when they looked at Percy. They saw eyes like the sea and lips _begging_ to be kissed and to suck; hair made for pulling and an ass _made_ to –

_Ahem._

So maybe – just maybe, he would concede; _maybe_ – Nico worked double-time to make absolutely certain that every other boy who looked at Percy knew full well that all of those things that made Percy such a big, damn, heroic, demigod-wünderkind-sexyface were _his_.

“I think he was just saying hi,” Percy said, his cheeks pink and his lips a little swollen, looking quite sheepish and rather adorable when Nico finally let him breathe again. “I’m ninety-eight percent sure that he’s straight.”

Nico shrugged and shifted _just so_ where he straddled Percy’s lap. He nipped at Percy’s ear and smiled at the goosebumps that shivered into existence on the older boy’s skin. “Yeah, well, I was ninety-eight percent sure that I was straight before I met you, too.”

“You were _ten_ when you met me,” Percy laughed. 

“Excuse me, first of all, a ten-year-old has a self-identity, and secondly, I was seventy-two.”

Percy’s nose wrinkled. “Don’t remind me. There’s something very weird about dating an eighty year old seventeen-year-old.”

Nico circled his slender hips a little against Percy’s again and grinned at the warning look in Percy’s eye. They _were_ still out on the benches in front of the whole camp, after all. “Doesn’t seem like it bothers you that much. And besides, I hear it’s all the rage right now with you young people.” Then he noticed the boy who’d said hello to Percy before – some Undetermined son of a minor god; who did he think he was, making a pass at the son of a Big Three? Plebe! – still staring, a little hungrily, so Nico scowled and turned Percy’s face back to his. “Now, kiss me, whippersnapper.”

_That’s right, sons of titans. This fine piece of demigod-wünderkind-sexyface is 100% property of Nico di Angelo._

**_007\. Πορνεία (Lust)_ **

Much the way that he radiates death, Nico di Angelo thunders with lust. At least, Percy thinks so. He gets hard every time he thinks about Nico much less looks at him. Every inch of Nico is beautiful, and he knows it and isn’t afraid to use that beauty to get Percy right where he wants him.

Sometimes when they’re training, and Percy is _sure_ that Nico doesn’t know he’s looking, because they’re both wielding godly swords and the sweat is flying and the younger campers are cheering them on – Percy and Nico and Annabeth and whoever is, frankly, dumb enough to challenge one of the Heroes that day – and really, how could anyone split their focus between not getting their head bashed in with a heavy sword hilt (not that it could hurt Percy, but still, the point remains) and staring at their boyfriend, he just… watches him, out of the corner of his eye.

He watches the twist of Nico’s back beneath his black t-shirt, and it gaps a little between the hem and the top of his oh-so-tight black jeans (Percy’s idea, and a very good one, he thinks) and he thinks about how Nico loves having those dimples at the base of his spine licked and –

Nico lunges and there’s a clatter of metal against metal, and it’s all Percy can do to contain his smile as he thinks how very _nice_ it is that Nico is so flexible.

And his parry is over, and Nico’s won, of course, and some Ares-child is cursing and shaking out a maybe-sprained wrist, their blade lying in the dust a few feet away. Nico is covered in sweat but he’s not even panting, and he turns to Percy with the slyest grin on his chisel-cut face like, _I know you want some of this._

And of course, Percy does.

 

 

   
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